He correctly identified the central story right now: Which is
that the economy seems to be on the
verge of a breakout, and yet the Fiscal Cliff remains a major
threat which he doesn't have the power to counteract.

That decent growth is likely to come from housing:

Recently, the housing market has shown some clear signs of
improvement, as home sales, prices, and construction have all
moved up since early this year. These developments are
encouraging, and it seems likely that, on net, residential
investment will be a source of economic growth and new jobs over
the next couple of years.

He then described the emerging positive feedback loop, whereby
rising home prices create looser lending standards, creating more
housing activity, more homebuilding, and so forth.

But the threat of austerity is the main concern.

Although fiscal policy at the federal level was quite
expansionary during the recession and early in the recovery, as
the recovery proceeded, the support provided for the economy by
federal fiscal actions was increasingly offset by the adverse
effects of tight budget conditions for state and local
governments. In response to a large and sustained decline in
their tax revenues, state and local governments have cut about
600,000 jobs on net since the third quarter of 2008 while
reducing real expenditures for infrastructure projects by 20
percent. More recently, the situation has to some extent
reversed: The drag on economic growth from state and local fiscal
policy has diminished as revenues have improved, easing the
pressures for further spending cuts or tax increases. In
contrast, the phasing-out of earlier stimulus programs and policy
actions to reduce the federal budget deficit have led federal
fiscal policy to begin restraining GDP growth. Indeed, under almost any plausible scenario,
next year the drag from federal fiscal policy on GDP growth will
outweigh the positive effects on growth from fiscal expansion at
the state and local level. However, the overall effect of federal
fiscal policy on the economy, both in the near term and in the
longer run, remains quite uncertain and depends on how
policymakers meet two daunting fiscal challenges--one by the
start of the new year and the other no later than the spring.

This is the story everyone needs to be watching. Everything else
is kind of a distraction.

In the Q&A he hit on other interesting points, such as the
issue of the Fed paying interest on excess reserves (IOER), a
payment that's commonly said to be an inducement for the banks to
do nothing, and just leave money at the bank. Bernanke's angle is
that eliminating IOER to zero would barely stimulate any lending,
but that having zero rates could cause mechanical issues in the
market, and that keeping IOER allows for an easily tool to
tighten policy in the future, simply by raising it.

He also framed his thinking in terms of a clearer rules-based
approach to monetary policy, i.e. The Evans Rule, which would
instruct the Fed to keep easing until unemployment drops to 7% or
inflation rises above 3%. Bernanke seems sympathetic, but also
notes the complexity of the economy/monetary policy, and he's
skeptical that such a blunt rule could really capture the
situation properly.

His final line of the speech spoke to the moment of promise:

...cooperation and creativity to deliver fiscal clarity--in
particular, a plan for resolving the nation's longer-term
budgetary issues without harming the recovery--could help
make the new year a very good one for the American
economy.